Tales from the Chopping Block
by frodogenic
Summary: A halfway house for orphaned scenes, alternate scenes, and all those other bits and scraps and pieces that are never going to make it to a finished story. If you enjoy my finished work and, like me, you enjoy getting a glimpse at the work writers do to get to a finished story, you might get a kick out of this stuff :)
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Hi all! This is something I've thought vaguely about doing for awhile. I think most of us who write probably take an interest in seeing how our fellow authors do it, or getting glimpses of the unfinished stuff that was part of the process. My own writing process tends to involve a whole lot of reconceptualizing and rewriting, which at the end of the day usually leaves me with five to six discarded scenes for every one that makes the final cut. Often there's a lot about these scenes I really like, but for some reason or other they just weren't working in the bigger picture. So, with a certain amount of embarrassment, I present to you The Chopping Block. It's intended to be a sort of home for those irregular bits and pieces that won't make it into any of my completed works, but which might be of interest if you've enjoyed them. What goes up here will not be polished to a high shine (hence the embarrassment, but this is probably good for my perfectionist streak), and the posts will be irregular, whenever I find something that I feel deserves a slightly better fate than consignment to the excerpts folder on my laptop. :)

Up first is an alternate take on a portion of Chapter 13 of Meet the Skywalkers, in which Vader suffers a medical emergency due to shock from seeing his mother's journal. The finished scene is written from Piett's POV. I had gone through probably a dozen rewrites, revisions, and nitpicky edits on the chapter, but I felt that the conversation between Vader and Piett in the second half wasn't quite working. I decided to try writing the critical scene of the chapter from Vader's POV instead. Doing that gave me the grasp I had been looking for on the heart of the scene, and what had been a frankly boring conversation about repentance, love, etc became a much more natural exchange of family stories. So the moral of the story is, many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view ;)

* * *

 **From _Meet The Skywalkers:_ Chapter 13, Alternate POV**

* * *

He stared at the battered old recorder for an endless age. He felt that he was on the rim of a black gap in the floor which might turn out to be a patch of mismatched paint, or a chasm plunging directly to a hell he'd never climb out of. Terror, or hope—he couldn't tell them apart any longer—held him frozen at the very edge, thumb hovering over the activation key. So long as he didn't—so long as he didn't he could tell himself it was of no consequence, wasn't from her, probably didn't even work, certainly wasn't worth his time…

But his conscience, poor beaten-down thing that it was, struggled to its feet, and it had Leia's voice, Leia's eyes. _You promised. You promised to accept whatever I gave you._

He had expected death, disgrace, humiliation, contempt…not this.

 _Whatever I gave you._

He pressed the activation key.

It was the worst and best thing that had happened to him since Endor.

His mother, young—she looked so _young—_ and whole, was frowning at the pickup and muttering to herself just the way he still did when trying to unravel some thorny glitch in a prosthetic. "…this thing is still not working."

Her voice, her face—something was wrong with them, they didn't look or sound the way he remembered—why—he felt a sick panic inside—had he forgotten? Had he failed her, all these years, in something so simple as _remembering_ what she'd been like—

"What are you doing, woman? I told you to clean my shop. Memory chips, you clean at home."

The image jumped away from his mother—Watto, and he didn't look right either—colors wrong, voice wrong, though that suspicious scowl was exactly correct—what was wrong—

"Where did you get this? Is it yours?"

"I bought it with my memory-chip earnings. I thought—"

"Maybe I should sell it for disobeying me, eh?" The image rolled like a podracer crash; Watto was turning the journal over, examining it like he did every piece of junk he'd called merchandise. "But it's not worth much, I think. Back to work, or I will."

The image winked out.

That couldn't—that _couldn't_ be all! It wasn't enough—it wasn't _nearly_ enough—

Text flashed up: _ENTRY 2._ Hope and terror sprang back to life, and then she was there again. No Watto, no junk shop—just her wrong-colored face and the stars behind her in glorious array, with that maddening reddish cast the mask always—

 _The mask._

It was the work of half an instant and no thought to rip it off. His wrecked retinas couldn't focus except at point-blank range, so he held the recorder close to his face, so close it was nearly like having her with him. There was no red filter now, no tinny, distant cast to her voice.

"You might enjoy something to remember Watto by, so I left that as entry one. He's not so bad, as masters go, and I do believe there are times when he truly misses your mischief…"

He closed his burning eyes and wished to gods he could cry for her. He had not forgotten. He had changed so that he barely knew himself, but he had not forgotten.

"Ani, this diary is for you. I know you'll be gone a long time, and that you'll be very lonely at times. So will I. This diary is so that when you come home someday, you'll know you were always in my heart. But your destiny lies in the stars. You will achieve great things in the galaxy, Anakin. I have known that from the moment you were born…"

Something, distantly, was burning and screaming. It might be his lungs or an alarm on the suit or both. He could not be bothered to find out. He wanted nothing at all but to listen to her voice, to be with her, whatever got him there. He pressed the _repeat_ key on the recorder to start Entry 2 over again—and again—and again. His knees went out from under him awkwardly and he crashed to the deck, but he hadn't lost his hold on the recorder and that was all he cared about.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Me again :) Thanks for the kind reception!

Up next on the Chopping Block: This is one of the drafts I wrote for Chapter 9 of _Meet the Skywalkers_ , wherein Piett is taken for a tour by a Palace guard and has a heart-to-heart with a memorial window of Padmé, though he doesn't realize who she is. About halfway into writing _MTS_ , I decided Piett was going to meet ALL the Skywalkers, including the dead ones. This, you may imagine, presented the challenge of how one goes about introducing dead characters to living ones in a believable and meaningful way. For Shmi I had an easy answer in her holo-diary, taken from the novel _Tatooine Ghosts_. Padmé was harder, but in getting creative with the Imperial Palace setting and imagining what a building like that might be likely to contain, I came up with the idea of the Mausoleum-sort of thing you get in capital cities-and obviously, a cemetery is a great place to meet a ghost.

The following excerpts come from the earliest version of the scene, in which Padmé's ghost actually appears and talks to Piett. On reflection, although I liked the interaction between them, I felt the detour into the supernatural didn't suit the rest of the story. The finished chapter is a more realist approach to the same idea.

I never had a completed take of the ghost Padmé version of the chapter, as I was having a hard time getting a handle on it. Often when that happens, I'll drop the original thread and jump forward in the scene trying a different approach to finish, which was what happened here. The first scene here assumes that Piett discovers who Padmé is toward the beginning of the conversation; the second placed the reveal at the end of the chapter.

Fun fact: one of the other drafts of this chapter featured ghost Obi-Wan in place of the guard and Padmé. PSA to my fellow authors, Obi-Wan + Piett = Dead On Arrival (prove me wrong :).

* * *

 **From _Meet The Skywalkers_ : Chapter 9, Earlier Draft, Scene 1**

* * *

He gave up all attempts at sleep around oh-two or oh-three hundred hours in the morning. The walls seemed to bend inward on him, a mocking reminder that soon he'd lose his command and be relegated to some dirtbound domestic hellhole, with nothing to occupy the rest of his life but word puzzles and holovid soap operas and other stupid, pointless hobbies reserved for people who'd outlived their usefulness. Finally he threw on his uniform jacket and trudged out into Imperial Palace. He needed to have space, a sense of going somewhere, of being involved in a bigger whole with other busy people…

His boots rang dully on the marble tiles, loud in the dim and quiet that had settled over the diplomatic suites. Too dim. Too quiet. What in the hells were they all doing in bed? Wasn't Coruscant supposed to be the planet that never slept? A warship never slept; shifts came and went, but her crew was always about its business.

He ran a hand over his burning bloodshot eyes and tried to find the silver lining on the nebula. No more crew and no more business to be about, true; but, on the other hand, no more Vader.

The concept didn't compute; it was like trying to tell himself the galaxy was scheduled to switch from clockwise to counterclockwise spin next weekend. He tried rephrasing it in practical terms.

 _You'll be able to think_ Darth Vader is a bucket-headed piece of bantha poodoo _fifty thousand times a day and he'll never know._

Except he wouldn't want to, because there wouldn't be any Darth Vader around to drive him up the bulkheads.

 _You can screw up something important and nobody will strangle you in thin air for it._

Except he'd have nothing important to screw up.

He scoured his eyes again with one hand. There was an old bedtime tale his friend's mother had used to tell them, about a trained nexu in a circus that dreamed about living free in a meadow; but when it finally got to a meadow, it panicked and ran back to the circus. He was that damn nexu. Kest, how he missed his circus, right down to the gods-damned mouse droids that were always getting underfoot and trying to break his neck.

Easy for Vader to throw it all away. He had a family to turn to, damn him anyway, a family of lunatics and priests who were either crazy enough or kind enough to forgive him his endless sins. He had a son who welcomed him home as if he'd been the best and most loving of fathers, grandchildren ready to bestow all the thrilled, admiring fascination a patriarch could ask for, a daughter whose political clout would shield him, and probably a slew of secret accounts stashed away with all the credits he needed; so why continue to burden himself with a broke-down old warship and her broke-down old admiral? The Empire had foundered, so every man for himself.

He didn't have the faintest idea how long he'd been wandering the corridors, nor where he had gone. Easy to lose yourself in a building three kilometers on a side. Probably some sort of metaphor in there somewhere, but he was tired of trying to make sense of things. What had ever made sense anyway, beyond the day-to-day nuts and bolts? Rebellions, Jedi, Vader—especially Vader, _always_ Vader—all of it was over his head, always had been, so why try to understand it? Keep your head down, do your job well; that was what had gotten him through. Head down, just slog on through, focus on your own sandbox—even when your sandbox was falling apart.

It worked well until they took your sandbox away.

Sandbox. She wasn't a sandbox. She was a _warship_ , the grandest and finest there'd ever be in his opinion. Gods, how proud he'd been when those orders came, when he first saw her long, sleek arrow shape swelling in the construction slip at the Kuat Drive Yards. He'd known right away that no matter how his old mother wrung her hands and suggested the daughters of all her friends and her friends' friends, there'd never be another woman for him but the Lady.

He felt dead inside at the idea of her in a scrapyard, being disemboweled by degrees, until there was nothing left of her but his memories. After all those years of fighting, hauling themselves up by their bootstraps to keep her alive, to lose her this way…

There was, out of the blue, a wall in front of his face. He looked up and discovered it was chiseled with names. Names by the hundreds—the thousands—in fact, glancing quickly to the left and right, it might well be _millions_ of names cut into the stone. Not a particularly nice stone either—looked like commonplace sandstone. He stared at it, burned-out brain trying to solve the puzzle. You didn't use _sandstone_ in _Imperial Palace_ , for the love of the Force. This place was the greatest architectural wonder in the galaxy, the shrine of such peerless marvels as the Forest of Kashyyyk, a colonnade of two hundred hand-sculpted millennium-old wroshyr trees which had been the Wookiees' gift to the Galactic Republic six thousand years ago; the Serenno Ballroom, with its mosaic floor comprised of six million individually-painted enamel tiles; the Imperial State Hall, where the Emperor had presided over state dinners at a ten-meter-long dining table carved from a single block of Alderaanian sea-crystal which would have bankrupted a Mid-Rim system _before_ the Death—

Alderaan.

He shot a quick look up and down the wall, then turned around and finally took note of his surroundings. Plaques tiled the entire vast hall in which he stood, shielded by transparisteel flooring panels. At the farthest end a shimmering column of weaving lights pointed heavenward. Opposite the wall at his back, placed on an elaborately wrought pedestal, was a kinetic sculpture, slowly flowing through faces he didn't recognize.

This was the Mausoleum.

He turned again to the wall behind him, stepping defensively back. Yes, he saw the cues now; the names were certainly Alderaanian, as was the arralute motif embossed on the panels. Now the sandstone made sense. Likely it had been the only material from Alderaan that the artist had been able to find enough of to carve all the names. He swallowed and stepped away, not wishing to dwell on the Empire's most nauseating legacy. He went over to the kinetic sculpture, but upon spotting the words _Ghorman Massacre_ on the pedestal veered away from that too; those would also be victims of that bastard Tarkin. A protest, if memory served him, which the tender-hearted Grand Moff had landed his ships on, crushing demonstrators by the thousands…

Darkened archways dotted the walls on either side as he left Tarkin's personal contributions to the galaxy's woes behind him, opening to other wings of the Mausoleum. Names passed beneath his bootsoles, heroes of the old Republic in eons past mingling with the honored dead of the Rebels. He trudged up, very tired, faintly curious, to the column of light, which mesmerized his weary gaze. What the pattern meant, if anything, he didn't know; but its peace and beauty called to some deep corner of his soul where there'd been little of either for many years.

He looked down at the base of the column, wondering whose memorial it was, and found a small epitaph inscribed. _There is no death—there is the Force._

"You look lost."

Piett looked sharply up. A slight figure stood on the far side of the light sculpture, brightly lit; a woman. He drew himself up defensively.

"I beg pardon, I didn't mean to intrude."

She smiled. "Please don't consider it an intrusion. What brings you here at this time of night?"

"It's nothing," he said reflexively.

"People don't come to the Mausoleum in the dead hours of the night for nothing, Admiral Piett."

He jerked his chin up. "How do you—oh."

The uniform, of course. There couldn't be many old-style Imperial naval uniforms wandering around Coruscant these days, never mind ones with flag insignia pinned on. He forced a bitter smile. "I suppose everyone recognizes me on sight, come to think of it. I'm the sideshow of the hour."

"Well," she said, and a playful glint entered her eyes. "You can't very well perform vanishing tricks with Super Star Destroyers and expect no one to notice. Even Coruscantis are surprised by _some_ things."

Piett grunted, but without resentment. She was a pretty young thing, kind and innocent, and he didn't mind amusing her. "I suppose not."

"So. Why did you come?"

He shrugged. "I couldn't sleep."

"The negotiations?"

He nodded heavily.

"Do you expect them to last much longer?"

"No." He should know better than to go around discussing what hadn't yet been signed and shaken on—but something about the quiet way she stood there, the sacredness of this atmosphere, loosened his usual inhibitions. "No, it will all be over by this time tomorrow."

"You don't sound pleased."

He shrugged. "I…suppose I've been a Navy officer too many years. I don't know what I'll do when…"

He swallowed hard.

"You have family," she pointed out gently.

He sat down heavily on a bench, leaning forward with his elbows between his knees. "They barely know me."

"When did you see them last?"

"Three years before the Battle of Endor. I took leave at home before assuming command of the _Executor_." He touched the insignia bars on his chest. "My sister insisted on sewing the rank insignia on my new uniforms herself. Never mind the household droid could have done it in half the time."

She smiled. "She must be very proud of you."

He swallowed again. "Yes. Some days it was the only thing that kept me going." There had been days—whole months, really, during that hellish hunt for Skywalker—when nothing but the memory of Carilla wrestling with those needles had given him the courage to walk back onto his bridge of a morning. And the thought of what she must have suffered when she answered her door one morning after Endor and found an officer there with a flag…

He swallowed hard on a mouthful of breakfast. He should have tried to contact her the minute he got back into known space, the New Republic's quarantine be damned.

"I beg your pardon, but—who _are_ you?"

"I'm Padmé."

He frowned. It was not a name he'd heard before. "For someone I've never met, Miss Padmé, you know a great deal about me."

"It's nothing nefarious, Admiral." Her eyes danced in gentle amusement. "You work with my husband, you see."

Piett stared. He'd eat his insignia pins if she was a minute over thirty; which meant she'd been a scampering child when he and his crew and their resident Sith mascot went haring off on their twenty-five-year joyride. But the sky sparkle in her expression was just bright enough to make him swallow his denial. "Who, may I ask, is your husband?" he said instead.

"Guess." She circled slowly around the edge of the column of light, reaching a hand briefly into its pattern as if she could feel it. Something about her mien seemed oddly familiar, but it wasn't of anyone in his crew he was reminded, it was—

It all clicked together abruptly—the hallowed ground of the Mausoleum, the light, the dark, the way she carried herself. He lurched up out of his seat.

"You're her," he said hoarsely. "You're _his_ wife. Vader's."

She looked towards the top of the column. "Anakin's," she corrected him, without anger. "And yes."

He shook his head slowly. "But you're dead."

"Yes," she said, as serenely as if he had remarked the sky was blue. "As you would understand it."

"There isn't any such thing as ghosts," Piett told her irritably.

"Then perhaps it's a dream instead."

Piett considered that. Yes, that must be it; he had somehow managed to fall asleep after all, and was only dreaming that he had walked out of his room and wandered the Palace all night. He relaxed. "Well, then. I suppose there's meant to be some cosmic lesson in all of this." He cast an unfriendly eye over the Mausoleum. "I expect I have to accept my losses and move on. And you…" He studied her, somewhat clinically. "I suppose you're meant as some symbolic reminder that it could always be worse?"

She raised her eyebrows, exactly the way her son did. Curious that the dream should be so specific about such details. He wondered if he'd remember all this when he woke. With some asperity, she replied, "If it's a cosmic lesson, Admiral, then I rather suspect I'm meant as the teacher."

* * *

 **From _Meet The Skywalkers_ : Chapter 9, Earlier Draft, Scene 2**

* * *

"Why did you stay?"

"What?"

She tilted her head. "It's a simple question, Admiral. Why did you stay with him?"

He stared at her. "I—had no choice in the matter."

"We both know that isn't true." Her voice was gentle as rain, but relentless. He looked away. "You could have requested a transfer."

He set his mouth stiffly. "Not without ending my career. As flag admiral to the command of the Navy there was no equivalent post for me to choose. Asking to be transferred to a position of reduced responsibility is no better than a resignation."

After a brief pause, she stepped up to within a meter of him. "Then why didn't you resign?"

He glared at her point-blank. "I couldn't have _resigned_."

"Why not?"

His scowl deepened. "That would have been reprehensible."

"Many would say it was reprehensible of you not to," she returned, suddenly quite sharp. "You personally witnessed your commander murder two of your fellow officers, one of whom was your subordinate and whom it was _your_ duty to defend. Men have resigned for lesser failures, Admiral."

His scowl cracked after a moment. He sat down heavily on the bench behind him, bending over his knees in sudden nausea. "Yes, they have."

"So I'll ask you again. Why didn't you resign?"

He stared at the granite-block floor, feeling as if the weight of the entire Imperial Palace were leaning on him. Finally he shrugged and said, "It would have been a betrayal."

"Of him?"

He waved a helpless hand. "Him, the Empire, my oaths, all of it, I don't know. They were…well, they were harsh times. We were at war. The security of the whole Empire depended on capturing Skywalker."

"So he said."

Piett snorted, waved a hand at all of Coruscant and the galaxy beyond where the New Republic was busily republicking while Palpatine rolled in his metaphorical grave. "Was he wrong?"

He heard a smile in her voice as she replied, "No, I suppose he wasn't."

Piett shrugged again. "Well. From his perspective their failures put the entire Empire at risk. Dereliction of duty doesn't get much more fundamental than that when one is a Navy officer..."

She looked up at the slowly evolving light column. "I've no doubt you found some comfort all these years in interpreting matters that way. But since Eriadu, I believe you must understand it wasn't like that at all."

Piett wanted to shake his head, but thinking of the earlier conversation with Vader, the casual way he'd sloughed off the _Executor_ and all the people who depended on him…he pinched the bridge of his nose cruelly.

"Did it mean nothing to him?" he said hoarsely. "We had a vision of what the Empire meant, what it was, what it was going to be. We gave our lives for that. We let _him_ throttle us like nuna chicks because we believed he was leading us there. Can he really not have given a damn for any of it? Was it all some sick power trip?"

She didn't answer him for a long time. He was left to listen to his own rasping breath as he fought to assert control over himself, echoing faintly in the halls of sorrows around and above him.

"Institutions never meant much to Anakin."

Piett got stuck mid-breath. In wonderment he looked up at the quiet self-possessed little brunette next to him. Could this youthful slip of a girl actually _know_ the story of Anakin Skywalker? And damn it, _how_?

"But he cared very deeply about people," she continued, folding her hands in her lap and looking up into the columns of light. "He loved his friends and family passionately. Dangerously. There was no sacrifice he would not have made for them."

"Like his son?" Piett said sarcastically. "I can't think of two more opposite—"

"No," she said. "Not like his son. Luke would lay down his life, but no more."

Piett huffed. "What more is there?"

"His integrity," she said. "His belief in what is right. There are some things love must not abandon if it wishes to remain love. There are some pieces of himself a man cannot lose if he is to remain a man. Anakin learned that too late, to the sorrow of many."

She fell silent for a space, as if she too felt the weight of the building pressing down on her slight shoulders. "I'm sorry," he said, stupidly, without knowing why.

"As am I, Admiral, for you. You've carried a heavy burden for many years, in large part because of his choices. It was unfair."

He shrugged again. "The only fair thing in life is it's unfair to all of us. Besides, I _have_ got my own brain. It was my decision to join to Navy in the first place, my decision to seek out command training. And if it weren't for him, my ship and crew and I would have been dust motes orbiting Endor these twenty-five years gone." His lip twisted bitterly again. "Not that I should interpret anything from that. I suppose we were just collateral damage in reverse, seeing as he didn't give a damn about the Empire."

She cleared her throat. "He never cared much for the Empire, Admiral, much as I know that pains you. But I don't think it follows that he never cared much for you."

Piett gaped at her. She smiled. "I told you. _People_ matter very much to him."

"I—he—well he's got a damned fine way of _showing_ it," Piett finally spluttered.

"Mm," she agreed, smiling wider. "Perhaps he finally realized what a way he doesn't have with words."

Piett snorted, muttering something under his breath that may or may not have been decidedly unfit for print. Not to mention ladies' ears, but he'd never been as old-fashioned as his mother would have preferred in that respect, seeing as the women he met generally wore uniforms. Poor Carilla had owed ninety-five percent of her scandalous vocabulary to his influence.

"You really think so?" he grunted after a minute.

She raised an eyebrow. "I think you already know it, or you wouldn't feel so betrayed right now."

He thought of the memorable showdown between Vader and his daughter-in-law. _Let's face it, you've got one actual friend in the entire galaxy_.

It did not sound any less jarring in retrospect.

"It's impossible," he said firmly. "It's absurd. That man doesn't _have_ friends. He wouldn't have a family either if it weren't for that crazy son of his. He doesn't know _how_ to have a reasonable relationship with another human being, you've got to force-feed it to him before—"

He stopped dead. Her presence acted like a mirror, reflecting back to him what he was actually saying. A man who'd lived without family for nearly fifty years. A man who'd lived encased in a walking sarcophagus for nearly fifty years, cut off from all normal aspects of human life and society. A man whose only nominal friend had put him through gods-knew-how-many sick mind games and manipulations for twenty years and finally ended by pitting him against his son, winner take all. He'd been starved of all human kindness, surely as if he'd been buried alive in a dungeon—and because he was strong he'd lived by consuming every living thing around him in unspeakable ways, all the scurrying frightened rats like Piett and Ozzel and Needa. Of course such a man had no friends. Of course such a man was a horror to his family…

Except for that crazy son of his. Skywalker had evidently taken to heart a proverb Piett had for decades dismissed as idiotic mush: _if a man strikes your cheek_ —or _whacks off your hand_ , as the case might be— _offer him the other._

He ran a hand wearily over his brow. He was no Luke Skywalker. "Why me?"

"You've been loyal to him for many years where others have abandoned him," she said quietly. "A man who has no friends notices such things, even if he has been too damaged to place his faith in them."

Piett nodded slowly, thoughts returning to the painful interlude in the library. "It's a test, then."

"Not a test," she said quietly. "A capitulation to the way he has known the world to work. Because he no longer has the power to hold you, he expects you to flee. Rather than wait to be abandoned, he chooses to isolate himself, as he always has. It's not indifference, Admiral. It's proof that he does, indeed, give a damn. Not about the Empire, maybe, but certainly about you."

Piett grunted again in half-disbelief. "Could have fooled me."

"He's good at tricking people," she said. "Especially himself. If that's not human I don't know what is."

She stood. "I've intruded for a long while. I'll leave you to your thoughts now."

She started towards the Jedi memorial, which seemed to be redoubling its brilliancy, and panic suddenly struck him. He half-rose from the bench and shadowed his eyes, trying to track her. "Hold just a moment! How do you know so much about it, anyway? Gods, you know more than _I_ do, and I've been with him—at _least_ as long as you've been alive!"

She turned, one last cryptic but glowing smile for him. "I've been with him much longer than I've been alive," she said, and turned back into the light.

He lunged the rest of the way up, stepping quickly forward. "What in blazes is that supposed to mean? Are you—"

It was too bright for him to see her now, absurdly bright, cornea-scorching bright. All around him the Mausoleum glowed white, as if tombs had come alive, as if—"Dead," he rasped, clutching behind him as he staggered back to the bench. "You're _dead_ —"

Her reply came, but it sounded as though a million voices spoke with her. "There is no death. There is the Force."

"No, this is—"

 _Wham_.

Piett's eyes shot open as he cried out "—impossible—gah!"

He screwed his eyes shut again as bright, but entirely commonplace, daylight bombarded his retinas. He relaxed backward with a low, relieved groan. Of course—it had all been a dream. He'd sleepwalked, perhaps, and dropped down on the floor of his suite and dreamed that he'd kept going through the Palace—because of course how could he possibly have been walking through the place for hours and never met a soul? And how could he possibly have been talking to a ghost, except in his…

The room around him felt…too big for his suite. Shielding his eyes, he pushed himself up with a groan and risked a look around.

He was on the floor of the Mausoleum. Next to him was the bench. A few paces away, the towering light sculpture memorial fluxed and glimmered, but did not blaze like a supernova. In fact its beams were muted in shafts of colored sunlight cutting in through a great stained-glass window at the end of the hall…a window depicting a beautiful brunette robed in white, glorious in the dawn rays lighting her from outside the building, kindness and sorrow mingling in her lifelike gaze.

It was the woman of his dream. He staggered to his feet and tottered over, staring up at her in amazement.

Surely it…surely it _had_ been a dream?

He swallowed, feeling the sour dried-up taste of his mouth, and looked down. A plaque beneath the window caught his eye; he stooped closer to read it.

 _Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away._

 _Given by the Sovereign System of Naboo_

 _In Loving Memory Of_

 _Padm_ _é_ _Amidala Naberrie_

 _46BBY-19BBY_

And as if from a different life he remembered, swift and clear, words from the clip Jacen and Jaina had showed him. _I know exactly whose fault it was. Senator Amidala was quite clear…_

He stared at the window in amazement even greater than that of the first tour group when it buzzed in and found him, rapt and bleary-eyed and wrinkled, at the queen's feet.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: This is an alternate version of chapter 12 from Meet the Skywalkers, in which Piett meets Ben. For anyone who hasn't read that fic, this is not Disney's Ben Solo, but Ben Skywalker from the old EU, who is less than two years old. I think toddlers are a blast to write because I've never met one who didn't have their own incredibly hilarious voice-they mispronounce, garble, mix up words, etc., so you can get particularly inventive in deciding how they will speak.

However, if you do it right, half of what your toddler character says is going to be incomprehensible :) For example, the name Ben knows for the Emperor is "the Very Bad Man", which he slurs into "bey bamman." So in order for a conversation to work between Piett and Ben, the scene needed another character who knows Ben-ese well enough to "translate" for Piett. Leaving me, the indecisive author, with the question of deciding which character that should be. :) I was most interested in using either Chewie or Artoo for the same reason that I like writing toddlers-neither of them has a fully-realized voice in the movies, so I would have more freedom to imagine how they would actually speak. I rewrote the chapter a few times trying both characters out.

In the end, I picked Artoo for a few different reasons:

3) Readability. A droid would develop figures of speech from technology and computer concepts, which tend to be very precise and which (even more important) Piett can believably translate for the reader as needed. For instance, when Artoo says that Luke and Mara "upload new operating instructions" to Ben, Piett can work out that this means Luke and Mara teach Ben things. A Wookiee, however, would draw figures of speech from forests, wildlife, hunting, tribal relationships, etc-things Piett knows nothing about. So Chewie's metaphors wound up being harder to explain than Artoo's.

2) Character chemistry. We think of Chewie as a loyal backup, whereas Artoo gives us the impression of being opinionated, assertive, spunky, and rebellious. Because we also think of Piett as a loyal backup, Artoo was a better contrast and created more energy in the scene.

1) The overall plot. I needed Piett to leave Coruscant, rejoin the Executor, and then bring the entire ship back to Coruscant. I originally had Piett meeting Ben on Coruscant. The problem with this was that I left myself without any narrative possibilities for his journey back to the Executor. I wasted a lot of time and a lot of words trying to solve this problem by introducing new subplots and characters, but this led to me losing the core of the story (which is, Piett meeting Skywalkers). The solution, it turned out, was to have Piett meet Ben on the journey, rather than on Coruscant. I decided that Mara could be the one to fly Piett away on the first stage of his trip back, and that she could bring Ben with her. Once I decided on that scenario, Artoo was obviously a more natural choice than Chewie.

All that said, I still really enjoyed inventing Wookiee metaphors and I thought it would be a shame not to share any of them ever :)

* * *

 ** _Meet the Skywalkers,_ Chapter 12 - Alternate Version **

_Han and Chewie are bringing Piett back from his visit with his nephew Justus, but seeing a massive anti-Imperial demonstration surrounding Imperial Palace, they decide to wait at the Skywalker apartment until the coast is clear..._

* * *

"Admiral," said Mara Jade. She was in a tattered workout singlet and half-demolished cargo trousers and bare feet and still looked like she could mow down any five battle-armored Mandalorian warriors you cared to name. "Come in. Fair warning, it's a disaster zone in here—"

"Unca Han!"

A small red-headed comet hurtled out of the adjacent living room and crashed headlong into Solo's boots. "Az mist you, Unca Han!"

Solo grinned an even more lopsided grin than usual and reached down to ruffle the child's hair. "That a fact, Skycrawler? I just saw you last week."

"Az see Dada?"

"Sorry, kiddo, not yet."

The sorrow produced by this reply instantly transformed back to delight as the Wookiee ducked into the apartment. "Tooey! Az mist you, Tooey!"

The Wookiee gave an affectionate woof, plucked the child out from between Solo's boots, and casually swung him by the collar in a practiced arc over his shoulder. Far from alarmed at this handling, the boy giggled and clung to the shaggy fur with hands and toes alike, for all the galaxy like a little Wookiee cub himself. Then he spotted Piett and pointed a pudgy finger. "Mama, az _dat_?"

"That's Admiral Piett." Mara produced what appeared to be someone's sock from her pocket and wiped his snotty nose. "He's Grandpa's friend. Can you say hello?"

The boy nodded silently at her. Solo guffawed, and the dirty look Mara shot him made Piett glad he hadn't laughed himself.

"Then please tell him hello," she prompted.

He hid half his face in the Wookiee's fur instead, in what Piett could already see was feigned shyness; his enormous grey eyes had much the same cheerful, inquiring spark that Skywalker's did.

"Ben Owen Skywalker," said Mara sternly. Guilt played comically over his impish countenance. "You need to be polite. Say hello."

Ben ducked his face further into the fur. "Addo."

"Hello, young man. Pleased to make your acquaintance." On a whim Piett doffed an imaginary cap, and was rewarded with a bright giggle. "And what have you been doing today, may I ask?"

Ben abandoned all pretensions to timidity. "Az fy payships wis Mama! Az make dem—" The explanation dissolved into a gush of incomprehensible syllables and mysterious gesticulations; Piett turned helplessly to Mara.

"We were playing with his model ships. It's one of his favorite games."

"Az wan' pay ships wis Dada," Ben said wistfully, and his mother's face softened.

"I know, sweetie. Daddy's a lot better at that than Mommy, isn't he?" She reached out to comb stray hair from his face.

Ben explained somberly to Piett, "Dada fy payship."

"Well," said Mara, "since Daddy isn't here, maybe you could play with Uncle—"

Solo frantically shook his head, held up his hand like a comlink, and mouthed _Leia_.

"—er, Uncle Piett."

" _Uncle_ Piett?" stammered the newly-christened addition to the Skywalker clan.

Mara shrugged as if she'd planned the whole thing a month in advance. "Why not? Scared of the competition?" She flicked her chin at Solo, who gestured to himself in wounded indignation.

"Well," said Piett. "When you put it that way." The Wookiee gave a barking sort of laugh. Solo rolled his eyes and headed off to the kitchenette, thumbing a code into his comlink. "Might I join you for a game of spaceships, young man?"

Ben looked him up and down with much the same _impress me, if you can_ attitude Piett remembered from the day he'd met Vader. "Uz fy payships, Unca Peet?"

"I believe I can, so to speak, wing it." Forty years in the Navy had to be good for a few transferrable skills.

The Wookiee made an amused-sounding whuff, as if he knew something Piett didn't, and piggy-backed Ben to the living room, where with one enormous paw he deposited the child on the carpet amid the greatest concentration of naval firepower that Piett had seen since Endor: five model Star Destroyers (one of them, he noticed with an internal groan, painted red), ten Mon Calamari cruisers, a couple of Corellian corvettes, a disproportionately huge replica of the _Millennium Falcon_ , sundry customized yachts and freighters, and whole squadrons' worth of starfighters, mostly X-wings. "Solo started it," Mara said, "and now everyone we know thinks it's a competition. Kid's going to wind up owning his own actual Death Star before he hits puberty." She paused behind the battered couch, arms crossed, as Piett eased down on an ottoman and accepted the fistful of starfighters Ben pushed at him.

"Das Unca Wedz," he chattered, pointing out an X-wing with a black semicircle painted on its prow. "An das Unca Hobbie"—a long hash-marked stripe—"an das Unca Taco"—calligraphy of some kind, maybe Alderaanian—"an az not pay wis Unca Wez." He pointed at yet another X-wing model locked in a display case on a very high shelf.

"Uncle Wes," said Mara, "is inordinately fond of scantily clad females." Her smile glinted, like light off a razor.

"Ah," said Piett. "In other words, he's a starfighter pilot."

That actually succeeded in getting a laugh from her. "Exactly, they're the same breed no matter which side of-oh, what the hells does he want now?"

A com chime had gone off loudly, somewhere down the hall.

"Friend of yours?"

"My theoretically former boss," she growled. "He thinks he's my reason for existing."

"I know the type." That got another laugh.

"Would you mind watching him for a few minutes with Chewie?" She nodded at Ben. "I'll only need about ten minutes or so to tell Talon where he can stuff his-ah, where he can get off."

Piett felt a slight quailing in his soul and was instantly disgusted with himself. If after thirty years of managing Lord Vader he was not, in fact, equal to the task of corralling Lord Vader's two-year-old grandchild for ten minutes, then he deserved whatever said grandchild could do to him. "Certainly."

She hadn't even gotten out of the room before there was an insistent yank on his sleeve. "Unca Peet!"

Piett looked down and nearly impaled an eyeball on the prow of yet another miniature X-wing.

"Dis Dada," Ben proclaimed proudly. The fighter jerked impetuously in his waving fist and, had Piett not dodged to the left, would have drilled his left nostril cavity a full centimeter deeper than designed by nature.

Piett steadied Ben's hand. This X-wing had a large fragmented circle marked on it-that must be a kill badge representing the first Death Star, so perhaps the mysterious "Unca Wedz" and his semicircle had contributed to the demise of the second-and a little blue-and-white astromech picked out in loving detail. "I see, and a fine ship it is too."

"Az fy payship!"

Ben plopped down, held out the X-wing, and the tiny ship took flight, hovering six inches over his chubby palm. "Uz doot," he ordered, pointing a hereditary forefinger at his playmate.

Piett picked up "Unca Taco"—no wonder the child hadn't batted an eye at the notion of "Unca Peet", uncles were obviously a dime a dozen in his world—and flipped it over, looking for the power switch. "Odd," he said after a moment, looking helplessly up at the Wookiee. "Does this one not have repulsors built in?"

Chewbacca barked in obvious amusement and shook his head, gesticulating expansively at the entire motley fleet. Piett wrinkled his brow. "I beg your pardon, I don't understand Shyrii-oh, thank you."

The Wookiee had produced a small device from his bandolier pouch and offered it. Piett turned it over curiously, then brightened as the Wookiee hit some sort of switch and a string of Aurebesh populated on the screen, flowing along as the Wookiee warbled at him.

 _A [ambiguous: dictionary, translator, protocol droid] of the pocket [alt.: purse, bag]. It is a firstborn cub [fig. sp. = prototype] which I am examining for insect larvae [fig. sp. = testing/evaluating] for The Cub's spouse of the hunt [fig. sp. = business partner]._

So...a pocket translator? The things they'd come up with while he was away. "How ingenious."

 _His mind flowers [fg. sp. = ideas; sarcastic emphasis] usually are. But in the desert it is better to eat the seeds of the rroorrik bush than to dream of eating kkorrwrot [trans. ?]._

Piett, after a few seconds spent trying to sort out the meaning of the last sentence, decided the helpfully noted sarcastic emphasis of the first was warranted. "True, true," he said knowledgeably. "But about the ships, what were you saying?"

 _None of the star shells [fig. sp. = starships] contain hidden wings [fig. sp. = repulsor units]._

Piett frowned and looked back at the ship bobbing over Ben's hand. "But that one—"

Ben flung a hand out impatiently, and the fighter in Piett's fingers jerked like a live thing. Astonished, Piett let go and watched it swoop in a shaky circle, weaving back around to his hand. " _Uz_ doot," Ben insisted.

Piett stared in amazement, first at Ben and then at the Wookiee, who roared with laughter and then oo-wralled to the child. _You must [play/divert oneself] as if with [lit: the father of the children of the daughter of one's father's father = "uncle"] Han, little cub._

The thunderous little brow cleared in comprehension. "Uz fy payship az _dis_ ," he pronounced, and with great gravity of countenance proceeded to move Piett's arm for him as if this was not the sort of activity that came naturally to most people. "Dis _a'ten_ fy."

"Ah." Piett zoomed the X-wing experimentally. " _Pretend_ flying. What an original imagination you have, young man."

The Wookiee woofed. _Welcome to the Skywalker [circus, sideshow]. We think the cub also believes that the Binder of Spirits [religious terminology: Force, cosmic power] is how real ships fly._

Piett glanced back at little Ben, who was now the gravitational hub of a four-starfighter orbital system. "Is it usual for those, ah, talents to manifest at such a young age?"

A noncommittal rumble. _Yes and no. The Solo cubs were also early leaves [fig. sp. = precocious]. But much of it is the jerking of the limbs of their own accord [fig. sp. = reflexive, subconscious, uncontrollable]. He does not fall. He knows where things and people are which he cannot see. He smells on the air [fig. sp. = senses, intuits] thoughts and feelings. Bad thoughts and feelings cause him distress like that of the hunted ooorriikwrar [trans.?]._

"It must be challenging to raise a child with such abilities."

 _You wouldn't believe the tantrums._

"Oh," Piett said, with a perfectly straight face, "I think I would."

A thunderous roar, which was apparently Wookiee for uproarious laughter, quite nearly split his eardrums. _You have bested me in the contest [fig. sp. = "touche"]._

"Unca Peet!" Something sharp-cornered and metal dug into his kneecap, dragging his focus back down. Ben was proudly exhibiting yet another starfighter. It was-good gods, it was a homemade x1 Interceptor, pieced together out of parts scavenged from other models and possibly a few comlink components.

"Dis Gampa," Ben informed him. "Az make uz!"

Piett exchanged a skeptical raised eyebrow with Chewbacca. "You made it all by yourself?"

Ben gave this some thought. "Az make uz wis Dada an' Mama."

"Your father called and showed you how?" Piett guessed, and Ben nodded furiously.

"Az see Dada on commink," he said, very gravely. "Az cuz Dada go pay wis Gampa."

Piett came dangerously close to solving the intriguing question of whether a human lung could be ejected directly through the nostrils. Chewbacca barked another Wookiee laugh. _The cub is not wrong._

Piett glared at him. "You do know he can read minds at this distance, don't you?"

A shrug. The Wookiee got up and sauntered toward the kitchen, perhaps in the conviction that a few extra meters would make all the difference.

"Uz Dada pay fy wis Gampa?" Ben chirped.

"I wouldn't be surprised if he was," Piett said darkly. What Vader and Skywalker could do to his ship in three minutes didn't bear thinking on, let alone three weeks.

Ben clambered up on top of Piett's boots, haphazardly hanging onto his knees. "Uz pay fy wis Gampa, Unca Peet?"

"Er-well, I suppose after a manner of speaking, yes." Only the model ship was nineteen kilometers long and they'd been out of adhesive for decades.

" _Az_ pay fy wis Gampa?"

"Oh," said Piett, startled...and not a little alarmed at the notion of tiny Ben in the uncertain hands of his fearsome progenitor. But there lurked in the child's countenance a certain suggestion of a looming meltdown should the answer not be to Ben's liking. He'd have pulled a Venka and passed the buck, but Mara was still nowhere to be seen.. "Well...I don't know."

Not so easily was the descendant of Darth Vader satisfied. "Az cuz why?"

Piett cast about him helplessly. How did one translate this sort of thing into toddler-size terminology? "Because...because Grandpa might not want to play flying."

If he had taken an entire convent of Orinthic nuns to a Hutt variety show, they could not have produced more scandalized expressions than Ben did at this unfathomable pronouncement. He clearly held it as a truth self-evident and universal that no sentient being could aspire to any greater joy than to play flying. "Az cuz why?"

Piett felt a sharp sting in his chest. He'd pitied the three Solo children, so young and naive to be saddled with such a dark and brutal relative-but innocent little Ben, who'd never imagined anything more terrible than perhaps one of his toy ships breaking, how could he even begin to understand? "Well, Ben, your Grandpa is very-ah, very sad."

"Sad?" echoed Ben.

The Wookiee rumbled something in a tone that Piett didn't need the protocol-droid-in-a-pocket to tell him was "skeptical emphasis".

"Er, yes," he said. "Very sad." _Please gods don't let him ever find out about this._ "And sometimes, ah, being so sad-being so sad makes him very angry."

 _Idiot_ , he told himself. What not-even-two-year-old could be expected to understand even a version _that_ over-simplified? What could he possibly know about darkness of any kind?

Ben turned over his toy TIE fighter, fixed surprisingly thoughtful eyes on Piett, and said, with a knowledgeable nod, "Az cuzzer bey bad man."

Piett frowned. "I didn't say he was a very bad man."

Chewbacca bellowed. _No. The cub is speaking of the Hewer and Burner of Trees._

"The who?"

The Wookiee plucked a small datapad from a nearby table, tapped carefully at its surface, and then held it up. The Emperor scowled none too benevolently back at Piett, as if personally reprimanding him for his past twenty-five years of life decisions.

"Oh," said Piett. " _That_ Hewer and Burner of Trees."

* * *

PS: for a few MTS readers who wanted to know: "Unca Wedz" = Wedge Antilles, "Unca Hobbie" = Hobbie Klivian, "Unca Taco" = Tycho Celchu, and "Unca Wez" = Wes Janson. ;)


End file.
